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Flight path fight intensifies

Simon RoyalUpdated
Mon 3 May 2010, 10:20 AM AEST

Stateline SA's Simon Royal reports on the increasing tension over aircraft noise in Adelaide.

Transcript

IAN HENSCHKE, PRESENTER: Hello. I'm Ian Henschke and welcome to Stateline, coming to you from the top of the ABC building in Collinswood because it's right under the main flight path to the Adelaide airport.

Now, with air traffic booming, some of the people who live under those planes are saying it's time to share the noise around with other parts of Adelaide.

Simon Royal has been listening to their story.

(Song: Leaving on a jet plane)

DAVID PRINCE, FAIRNESS GROUP: If the whole community benefits from an activity, then the community should be prepared to look at a little bit of sharing of some of the pain that goes with it.

DAVID O'LOUGHLIN, PROSPECT MAYOR: If you want to talk about sharing the burden, well, can we shift the royal freight noise over to that part of the city? That fact is we cannot do that.

Can we shift the suburban train noise? Well, we can't do that either.

SIMON ROYAL, REPORTER: This is a story of planes and politics - local politics.

(Loud plane noise)

Between them, neighbours Barry Waye and David Prince have enjoyed life in Walkerville for more than 70 years, almost without interruption.

DAVID PRINCE: It's not one of the jumbos. You know all about it when the jumbos come over because they're particularly heavy. But it's not likely that there'd be too many jumbos coming along the alternate path.

SIMON ROYAL: The inner city suburb is slap bang under one of the major flight paths.

Now David Prince, Barry Waye and other residents from Walkerville and beyond are forming a group called fairness.

They distributed these flyers at the recent state election. Their aim is not to close this flight path, but to open another one.

BARRY WAYE: We're not against aircraft. We're not against aircraft coming over.

What we really want is less of them. We feel that we could get a fairer distribution of the flight paths over the metropolitan area rather than more coming through this air.

SIMON ROYAL: According to Air Services Australia, the organisation responsible for flight paths, there were 13,000 jet aircraft arrivals and departures from Adelaide airport during the 2009 December quarter.

Just how many flew over the North eastern suburbs, the organisation can't say, but it says it's certainly the one used by the vast majority of planes from the east which make up most of the planes coming to Adelaide.

Barry Waye and David Prince argue some flights, maybe 8 to 10 a day, should instead follow a path along Churchill Road.

They say it's the most direct route for planes coming from Perth, Darwin and Singapore which currently are forced to fly out to Modbury, then turn around and come back.

DAVID PRINCE: Those aircraft are at the moment making quite a wide circle, another at least half an hour on the flight time, plus the additional pollution involved in that.

And they all end up on the one corridor which seems illogical when if you're coming from the north, you would take, you would think, you northern flight path.

DAVID WHITING, MAYOR OF WALKERVILLE: Well I think that there has been a lot of political lobbying from a number of people in different electorates who don't want, understandably- don't understand what it would be like and clearly don't want aircraft coming over their houses which aren't coming over them at the moment.

SIMON ROYAL: The issue has been considered before.

In 2008 Air Services Australia named using the Churchill Road flight path.

The Prospect City Council says lobbying by its residents and the intervention of local MP Kate Ellis prevented it from going ahead.

Qantas has told the ABC that flight paths are a matter for Air Services Australia

RALPH CLARKE, ADELAIDE CITY COUNCILLOR: Do I find it uncomfortable? Do I want to leave? No. I've lived here for 7 years and happily so.

Adelaide city councillor Ralph Clarke supports the idea of sharing the load, saying everyone benefits from sharing an airport in the middle of the city.

RALPH CLARKE: Well, sometimes it becomes a little bit...twee, a little bit too Adelaide in the sense of here we are wanting to encourage more direct flights into Adelaide so we can bring more tourists and business people to do business in Adelaide and create jobs in Adelaide.

And everyone leaps in the air and says, "Yes, it's wonderful, but not in my backyard."

DAVID O'LOUGHLIN: I understand people's concerns about the flights coming down here...

SIMON ROYAL: But the sharing the load argument is also used around Kilburn, Churchill Road and Prospect. Prospect Mayor David O'Loughlin says smaller planes already fly the Churchill Road corridor and the suburb has its fair share of suburban din.

DAVID O'LOUGHLIN: In terms of aircraft noise, one could argue that perhaps they should come down Churchill road, but let's have a look at what's happening down on Churchill Road already.

They have three train tracks and a major freight route already running along Churchill Road. We think it's worth the extra 40km so that the burden is shared equally from all users, not just aircraft, but heavy freight and suburban train.

PROSPECT RESIDENT 1: They don't have trains. They don't have the bells from the train stops that we can hear from here. So now we're going to have planes as well. I mean, fair's fair is if he they want fair.

PROSPECT RESIDENT 2: It's quiet now. In the mornings and later on over the years it has just increased.

PROSPECT RESIDENT 3: I would be dead against it because one of the reasons we bought here is to avoid that sort of thing.

SIMON ROYAL: Now, all of this has the potential to form itself into one of those niggling little local vote changes for MP Kate Ellis whose seat includes Walkerville and over there Gilberton and North Adelaide, but it also heads West.

And that means it includes suburbs like Prospect and Kilburn and voters here on Churchill Road.

(Loud plane noise)

The expectations are as clear as they are different

BARRY WAYE: We haven't contacted Kate Ellis yet.

DAVID PRINCE: Well, we have. We've tried.

BARRY WAYE: Well, we've tried. It's been a little bit difficult.

DAVID PRINCE: But we were not successful.

BARRY WAYE: But I'm sure she is contactable. She is probably quite a fair lady, I would say.

DAVID O'LOUGHLIN: I would expect that Kate would uphold the position she had last time, which was that Churchill Road residents already share their fair burden or more than their fair burden of noise when it comes to public transport.

SONG: I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...

SIMON ROYAL: It is a hazard for both navigation and politics. Out of a clear blue sky comes some turbulence

IAN HENSCHKE: And both Air Services Australia and Kate Ellis declined to give interviews but they both issued statements.

Air Services says because of reaction against the Churchill Road idea in 2008 it has no immediate plans to review the situation.

And Kate Ellis says she is looking forward to talking with the Fairness Group very soon but there would have to be significant community support before she would support changing the existing flight path.